


What Can't be Replaced

by kmichs



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-28 17:30:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15054242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kmichs/pseuds/kmichs
Summary: Link returns to Skyloft empty-handed. Upset, he takes solace in Zelda's room. He's a little more than comforted by her clothes.





	What Can't be Replaced

If anyone asked, Link would shamelessly but defensively admit that he did, in fact, cry alone in his room on his first night back in Skyloft. After a week of searching, fighting, barely surviving, and returning empty-handed, there was nothing left to do but cry.

It felt like longer since she’d literally fallen missing. Perhaps foolishly, Link had immediately leapt to her rescue. He thought nothing about any chance of failure as he descended into the new world below. He’d fought so hard for days through foreign forests to find her, but he had been just too late. He felt honestly selfish to believe that he should have her back by now. He’d truly descended that first time believing that a mysterious sword and a new uniform would give him the confidence to bring her home by this time.

And, in all honesty, he felt like a failure in this moment. His fellow villagers gawked at him as he returned, bruised and bloodied, without his best friend; his perfect other half. He knew what they all were thinking. Link stared at the ground, scowling at his own limitations. The rest of the town judged him for being unable to perform one simple, stupid task. He couldn’t bring her home, not yet, and this shame was the aftershock of that initial realization. 

He’d arrived at the Skyview temple two days prior. After getting lost within its walls for an unspeakable amount of time, he’d come face to face with a strange man with the same intentions as he: find Zelda. To Link’s surprise, he had returned relatively unscathed in the scheme of things, but emotionally empty. Without a clue where to go next, he found himself back above the clouds, here.

And now, here he lay, in his room, door locked, sniffling into his mattress. Everyone knew what had happened to the headmaster’s daughter. The pressure was weighing on Link, heavier than he could bear in this moment. He’d just graduated the academy by sheer luck and now he was on a mission no knight at this academy had ever seen before.

Many stopped to offer Link pity on his way to bed, but now that he was here and finally alone, he let go. The forest he’d emerged from offered no safety or solitude. Here, his blankets did both.

The longer he lay there, the darker the room got. He began to feel more tired, and with each passing minute guilt forced its way into the small bed with him. How could he possibly be safe up here if she was in so much danger down there? She was no longer a flight of stairs away. He squeezed his eyes shut and fresh tears spilled out.

In his whole life, Link had never gone a week without seeing Zelda. Skyloft was such a small, isolated place; there was no reason to leave for more than a night. The depth of the surface overwhelmed Link. There was no telling where she might be now. Not the Skyview Temple, that much was for sure. The horizons of the surface were just too vast for one boy to manage.

The Goddess Sword had been dropped by his door. Its simple presence was silent but deafening reminder of his inevitable fate. Fi left him alone at night, generally, meaning he could just fucking cry in peace. And so, he did, casting this shame on himself strong enough to make his head, chest, and belly ache. 

He missed her, and he wondered if he was important enough for her to feel the same. Of course she’d be missing him, right? She couldn’t be so focused on her own fate that she’d just forget him. The thought of it alone had Link rolling over and sobbing into his pillow. Tomorrow, this moment of weakness would have to end, and he’d have to return on his hunt for her. But for now, he was alone.

The academy walls betrayed him. The next morning, when Link was somewhere between assembling his chainmail and making a beeline for the surface the next morning, Fledge caught him.

Sure, their rooms were only separated by a wooden wall, but Link was still shocked that Fledge made mention of his private display of emotions by asking how he was holding up and whether he was okay.

“I’m fine, mind your own business,” he’d scoffed, quite literally pushing Fledge away to run toward the edge of the island. With his running start, Link descended to Eldin, Fi strapped to his back in tow.

 ________________

“I can understand how you’re feeling, but I really think it would be wise to just take a day to heal,” Fledge said next time his path crossed with Link’s. It had been another week since his last visit to Skyloft. All he wanted at this point was some soup and some sleep. Fledge was keeping him from both.

Donning fresh burns across his face, Link just bared his teeth and sneered at his friend at the suggestion. It was hard to ignore how badly the expression hurt his sunburned cheeks. Just short of a hiss, Link replied, “I can’t waste any more time until I know she’s safe.”

To this, did not argue. Instead, he offered whatever assistance he could in case Link should ever need anything.

That boy could not help unless he had the power to scoop her back to town himself, but of course he wouldn’t be able to do that. This was a task only Link could fulfill, and everyone knew it. Fledge’s words meant nothing and they both knew it.

Upon arriving at the academy, Fi materialized beside him. She said, “Master Link, I know this is not what you wish to hear, but he has a point. You are not finished at the volcano. We must return to the Eldin region soon but taking tomorrow off will do well for your injuries.”

What, so he could go back down and get all burned up again? Absolutely not. How could se shay that as he returned home without his best friend? Surely, she did not understand. His shoulders were aching, the muscles in his legs felt like they were the source of a thousand-degree fire, and he couldn’t walk without a searing pain cracking through his joints like ink through a fingerprint. None of that mattered; he couldn’t rest. 

“It would do you well,” she urged, and disappeared once more before Link could tell her to shut the hell up.

He dropped the Goddess Sword off by his door and collapsed into his bed. Tears were already springing to the pits of his eyes. This time, it was more pain than grief, Blisters on his feet and hands were breaking open after too much time trekking the surface. His bed was comfortable but he could not manage to relax as pain leaked its way through his nerves. He wondered where she would be sleeping tonight. Everything he did now revolved around her—what was she doing? Was she safe? Would he see her soon?

These thoughts flooded through him. Link was determined to keep it all inside or else Fledge would have more commentary tomorrow. Link’s eyes were not obeying. He could certainly not stay here.

It took him upwards of a minute due to the pain, but Link did stand up once more. He dug though his previously discarded pajama pockets until he found the key to her room that he should not have. With it, he stumbled up the academy stairs in his complete uniform, purposefully leaving the Goddess Sword behind.

Her room was exactly how it was every other time he had been here. Everything visible was in its proper place save the sheets of her bed. She must have been in a hurry on the morning of the ceremony.

The last time he was here had been almost a month ago now, when he’d stopped by the night before the ceremony. It was why she’d given him a key, so long ago, and he’d given her his too. They often visited each other at night; they were blatantly breaking the academy rules but never got caught. Or, at the very least, never they never got in trouble. 

That night—their last night together—they had spent hours laying in her bed together. The whole time, he listened to her babbling about her excitement within her role of the wing ceremony. Her excitement ran on until the sun had set and the upperclassmen would be doing their rounds. Neither of them cared. The worst that would happen would be that Pipit would escort Link to his room and slap him on the wrist. They weren’t scared of him.

She was literally dozing off as she spoke. With closed eyes, her words were lethargic, her voice thick with drowsiness. She was talking about how she knew that he would be the one to win. She said she just had this feeling in her stomach. Link had one of those, too, but it wasn’t a feeling of certainty. He was nervous that he would let her down but this was not worth mentioning. He decidedly would not let her down.

“And I know Groose is going to be a total dick about it,” she continued on, but Link was no longer listening. His eyes were open and he was not listening. All he could focus on was the smooth curve of her smile, the way her words flooded together in her drowsiness. He was laying on his side, practically laying on her in her twin sized bed. He could feel each and every inhale and he was loving every minute of it. Matching his breathing to hers was always a comfort.

Link, at this moment, made a “mm-hmm” noise to prove he was listening. He wasn’t.

She, of course, knew bette, despite the fact that her eyes were closed. “Link, if you’re so tired, go to bed.”

“You’re the one falling asleep mid-sentence,” he teased. But really, he did not feel as tired as she looked. He could have stayed here all night. He would have, too, if she’d let him. He’d gladly sacrifice sleep for her.

But tomorrow was a big day for both of them, and he’d need to get up early somehow. Common sense told him to retreat to his own room. He stood up and jokingly threw her blanket over her face. One minute, she was giggling, cursing his name. In the next, she’d freed herself, sitting up and grabbing him by the wrists. She hauled him back down onto the bed, locking him into a kiss.

The memory was too much. They hadn’t even had a chance to talk about it. It had been on his mind all the time: as he fell to the surface, as he fought through waves of hordes of monsters, and always as he was trying to fall asleep.

Standing just inside the doorway of her room, his head snapped to look at her wardrobe. He threw open its doors, remembering all of a sudden that she used to keep potions that she’d made for class inside. She wouldn’t mind if he took one… or several.

It would have helped if Link had actually paid attention in class because none of them were labelled and he didn’t know which did what. The first one he found was a deep red, nearly purple. He hoped for the best and drank half of its contents. The thick substance moved like syrup and tasted like sour cherries and dirt, and he did his best to ignore the chunks of stems she’d forgotten to filter out. 

He felt his heartbeat in his fingertips and then the pain in his burns subsided, along with the blisters on his palms. They were not gone, but still better. He could move nearly painlessly. He put the other half back should he need it again.

Feeling more like himself, he guiltily poked through her belongings. He’d never looked inside her wardrobe before. It wasn’t like the Zelda he knew. It was messy, full of dirty and clean clothes alike. He was humbled that she taped all his senseless doodles for her to the inside of the door.

Crumbled at the bottom of the wardrobe was the dress she’d been wearing the night before the ceremony. He took it out of the pile of dirty clothes…it still smelled like her. The memory once more beckoned tears in his eyes. It was comforting, in a way.

Link took the gown to her bed. He was caught up in the smell of flowers and honey that remained in the cloth. It smelled like his very own sailcloth but it was stronger, more hypnotizing. He held it up to his face and collapsed into her sheets.

Here, he couldn’t not think about that night. He couldn’t tell why she’d grabbed him that way, why she’d pulled him down into her embrace. But the memory haunted him, a constant reminder that there were just too many loose ends.

Mirroring her movement, he took hold of her gown when she let go, snaking his hands around her waist, up her back. He could feel the warmth of her skin through the fabric. Link could not be completely distracted from the warmth of her mouth as she opened it just slightly to breathe into him, tilting her head, pulling him close, letting him glide his hands up her back until he moved them back around to the front—

But just as abruptly as she’d initiated it, she pushed him back. She didn’t, however, let go of his shirt at first. All she was doing was staring at him, eyes wide, breathing heavy, like she couldn’t believe it either.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said sheepishly, loosening her grip, breaking the eye contact. Her face was scarlet now. Link was lost in the color of it.

He tilted his head as she looked away, doing his damnedest to keep the eye contact alive. He then realized that he was supposed to say something now, but he’d already forgotten what she’d said in the first place. So he sputtered out a “Y-you too, yeah,” and pretended to regain his composure. Certainly, his face was just as red as hers as he smoothed out his shirt and let adrenaline take him out the door and back to his own bed.

He rolled over onto his stomach, burying his face in her pillow. Undoubtedly, he was rubbing ash, blood, and dirt into it, but he did little to care. He breathed deeply, focusing partly on the memory of their first and only kiss. The other half of his mind had drifted far away, to settle in on how nice it felt when he drove his hips down into the mattress. He spent quite some time like this, face buried in her pillow, taking in the scent he’d been without for weeks, adjusting his weight in the bed until he was more than just comfortable.

It was frankly unsurprising to Link at how turned on he’d gotten by just clutching an old dress and putting a little bit of pressure on his crotch. He inhaled deeply once more and reached under himself to unbutton his pants and relieve some of that pressure. He drove his hips down again, but it wasn’t enough suddenly, he needed to—

He froze before he could fully roll over onto his back. It suddenly dawned on him that he would encounter the same problem here that he did with Fledge, but this time with Zelda’s neighbor, Karane. She’d known of Link’s late-night excursions and was quiet about it, but this? This was completely different.

Link held his breath. He’d already made too much noise going through the wardrobe. As best he could with his current distraction, he listened for any sign of life on the other side. Silence rang back; Karane must be on duty tonight. Link exhaled and that was his last truly sensible thought.

Still laying in bed, he managed to pull off his pants and tunic with some difficulty—it’s not easy to remove chainmail armor when your mind is set on other, obviously more important things, like the way the room was suddenly warmer, or how badly he suddenly needed to get his hands beneath is his underwear. 

The chains that made up his armor clanged loudly as it hit the stone floor. It caused Link to suck in a cautious breath, hold it in, but it appeared that no one noticed. Finally, he was able to tug his boxers down just enough to free himself from the trappings of the fabric, immediately wrapping a hand around his cock and tugging the skin back. Yes, this was better.

He tipped his head back into the pillow, contorting his neck until it cracked, relaxing into the sheets that definitely were not his. In that moment of relaxation, he forgot about the ball of clothing in his other hand. Abandoning all common sense, he brought it up to his face and inhaled as he dragged the fingertips of his other hand back down himself. When he exhaled he let out an involuntary moan, thinking of nothing but the softness of her back, how close he was to having his palm beneath her breast.

No one could read his mind and therefore he was not embarrassed to be thinking about her as he tugged and played with his cock until it was completely hard in his hand. Her presence was the only thing missing; he was already in her room and both their clothes were technically off. He wanted to hear her voice, or feel her slender fingers around him rather than his calloused ones, or damn, even just seeing her would make things better.

Her dress was half in his hand and half draped across his freshly bare chest. Sweat was beginning to coat his skin, seeping into the fabric of the gown. He glanced down at his newest possession before closing his eyes completely, squeezing them shut as he slid his fist down his dick. Slow at first, he picked up speed until he hit a rhythmic pace that suited him. 

Every part of the smell reminded him of her. His hips rose ever so slightly off the sheets to meet up with his fist as he pumped downward, until his arm was sore and he had to slow down.

Of course, he couldn’t imagine fucking her, but he could imagine her sitting there, talking as her usual self. This time, she wasn’t talking about her worries, or her cat, or her classes, but about him: what he was doing, or even words of encouragement. He could imagine that. She’d take her clothes off for him and he would hold them, just as he was now.

“Zelda,” He whispered, finally speaking her name as if she’d somehow be able to hear him. As if his voice would beckon hers. “Zelda, I…”

He could not finish his sentence. He didn’t need to. She would understand what he meant to say. He left the cloth draped on his face and moved his other hand to his cock, inhaling her scent while he circled his thumb over the tip until precum was dripping over his knuckles. Once his arm felt less sore from before, he increased the speed, the pressure of his thumb… He was too far gone to stop.

This time, in a pained whimper, he let out her name again, wordlessly pleading to let go. A jolt of something flooded through him and he felt like he could explode. Or, at least, he could see tiny white explosions behind his eyes as they rolled back into his skull as he knew what was to happen next.

His face contorted with agonized pleasure as he bit down on the fabric that’d found its way into his mouth. His breathing was fast and heavy and muffled and loud; every time he gasped to inhale he could smell her more strongly.

The feeling spread across his whole body but began between his hips, now grinding up on his fist, confident in his sin as he came. His feet fought to find traction on the bed as he lost contact with the bed beneath his thighs, powerful waves of pleasure rupturing through him as he struggled to maintain a rhythm on his cock.

He tugged on himself as hard as he could take it, letting liquid spill onto his chest, his stomach…the dress. There was a strong desire to run his fingers through it, taste whatever guilt lay in the product he’d created, but he could not, for his mouth was still occupied with the cloth. His tongue was lost in it somewhere, and he wished it could be more. He wished it could be her.

There was no energy left within him. He continued to gasp even when he was certain that it was over; until his stomach was growing cold where his seed had pooled. For just a second, he wondered if he had screamed her name, but honestly couldn’t remember and let the thought go along with his tension.

He rolled his shoulders back into the softness of her bed and was finally able to relax for the first time in weeks. Until it was just too sensitive, Link continued to rub loose fingers up and down his shaft, enjoying the moment before guilt set into its usual place in his bones.

He used a dirty towel from the wardrobe to clean himself off and made a mental note to do laundry in the morning. It wasn’t long before he was warm beneath her covers, more calm than he’d been in days prior. He was just tired now.

“I miss you, you know,” he mumbled to the empty room. Before he could fully grasp the true depths of his solitude, he was asleep, safe.

The next morning, he’d do three things before continuing his search for his best friend, his moral support, the love of his life: take a bath, wash her gown and sheets, then make her bed. She’d appreciate that, of all things.

**Author's Note:**

> this started as a joke so don't take it too seriously ok i lov u all


End file.
